[In May 2015] the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent a letter to the bankruptcy court presiding over RadioShack’s supervised asset sell-off suggesting a compromise that would allow RadioShack to sell its database of information from 117 million customers.

If there was ever any doubt about the importance of data as asset, the Radio Shack data scenario removed it. The customer list was likely worth more (at least to some prospective purchasers) than real estate or “tangible” inventory.